When you’re working on a project and in need of some help, where do you turn? Do you Prairie Dog and say hey dude, could you give me a hand? Or do you fire up FireFox and bounce a question or two off The Google? The majority of work that I do is still Flash based and or related; in fact almost all of it is – in some way or another. This means I can focus what I look at quite a bit. Here’s what I do….
- Search Google for Flash info
- Flip in my various books, mostly Essential ActionScript, ActionScript: The Definitive Guide, and ActionScript Cookbook.
- Check the Forums at Were-Here.com
- Check the Archives at ChattyFig – FlashCoders
And if that doesn’t work, then I make something up and hope it works.
Who’s on your list?
If I had to make a list of folks that I would like to pick their brains, it would be quite simple actually. Right off the top:
- Colin Moock
- Joey Lott
- Grant Skinner
- Stefan Sagmeister
- David Carson
- Robert Penner
- Joshua Davis
- Aral Balkan
- Phillip Kerman
Just to name a few – that would keep me busy for a while. I had the opportunity to actually meet David Carson and talk with him in a small seminar in Toronto in 2005, it was an awesome experience. The last FITC I attended, featured a session by Stefan Sagmeister as well, and that guy is flat out amazing. Actually, quite a few folks on that list were there, or at the FlashForward I went to in NYC in 2004. If you ever get the opportunity to attend Flash in the Can… go to Toronto, you will not be disappointed.
Even if I think I know what the hell I am going to do, I poke around a wee bit and see how others would do the same thing. You see, I work in a vacuum. Almost literally. It’s great working for an in-house firm – but out here in the mountains of Eastern PA it can get a little developer barren – if you get my drift. I routinely check what, and how I am planning to create the site or interactive piece with how others have or might create a similar project. Some times I proceed with my original design path, other times I find a simpler or better way to accomplish that task – and I even find other ways that change things both programmatically and from a design perspective. I have tried to get this step entrenched into my Development Process for a number of reasons. The most important being that I don’t get stagnant and pigeonholed into creating everything the same way – so I can remain flexible… dare I say agile?
Anyway, that’s my list; what’s yours?